the licence he had granted for
building castles, which were now like to prove so many places of
security for his enemies, and fortifications against himself; for he
knew not whom to trust, vehemently suspecting his nobles ever since
their last revolt. He therefore cast about for some artifice to get into
his hands as many of their castles as he could: in the strength and
magnificence of which kind of structures, the bishops had far outdone
the rest, and were upon that, as well as other accounts, very much
maligned and envied by the temporal lords, who were extreme jealous of
the Church's increasing power, and glad upon all occasions to see the
prelates humbled. The King, therefore, having formed his project,
resolved to make trial where it would be least invidious, and where he
could foresee least danger in the consequences. At a Parliament or
assembly of nobles at Oxford, it was contrived to raise a quarrel
between the servants of some bishops and those of Alan Count of Dinan in
Bretagne, upon a contention of rooms in their inns. Stephen took hold of
this advantage, sent for the bishops, taxed them with breaking his
peace, and demanded the keys of their castles, adding threats of
imprisonment if they dared to disobey. Those whom the King chiefly
suspected, or rather who had built the most and strongest castles, were
Roger Bishop of Salisbury, with his nephew and natural son the Bishops
of Ely and Lincoln, whom the King, by many circumstances of rigour,
compelled to surrender, going himself in person to seize the Devizes,
then esteemed the noblest structure of Europe, and built by the
forementioned Bishop Roger, whose treasure, to the value of forty
thousand marks,[31] there likewise deposited, fell, at the same time,
into the King's hand, which in a few days broke the bishop's heart,
already worn with age and infirmity.

[Footnote 31: This prelate's treasure is doubtless computed by the
smaller or Saxon mark; the use of which still prevailed in England: and
even thus computed, it amounts to a vast sum, equal to about L116,350 of
modern money. [D.S.]]

It may, perhaps, not be thought a digression to say something of the
fortunes of this prelate, who, from the lowest beginnings, came to be,
without dispute, the greatest churchman of any subject in his age. It
happened that the late King Henry, in the reign of his brother, being at
a village in Normandy, wanted a priest to say mass before him and his
train, when this m